


Oh For... Really?

by ponchard



Series: Literal Elf Nerds [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: AI, Alternate Universe - Artificial Intelligence, Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Literal Elf Nerds, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Programmers, Alternate Universe - Software Engineers, Ancient Elves (Dragon Age), Ancient Elves Probably Have Super Weird Fetishes Tho, Arlathan, Artificial Intelligence, Berethlok, Biotechnology, Bull's Chargers, Canon Compliant, Coders, Coding, Crack, Dipping His Pen In Company Ink, Do Not Bone Your Boss, Dragon Age Quest: Demands of the Qun, Dressing Their Current Lover Up As Their Ex, Elf Nerd Had Two Flowers, Elvhen Pantheon, F/M, Forgotten Ones, Gen, Like Just To Pick A Totally Random Example, Mage Nerds, Nerd Nerds, Painting, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Programmers, Programming, Qunari, Software Engineering, Software Engineers, Squinting Suspiciously At Every Elf In Skyhold, Sweet Sylaise Do Not Use Solas As An Example Of Good Decisionmaking, Xebenkeck And Her Ilk, but current Thedas is, creators, except that it's not modern Thedas that's in a modern setting, not that there's anything wrong with that, real talk, singularity - Freeform, the ancient elves live in a modern setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 10:56:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10333103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponchard/pseuds/ponchard
Summary: For some reason I've written another story where the ancient elves live in modern times, but post-Fall Thedas is canon compliant. Also the Creators and Forgotten Ones are mostly programmers. Also Solassmuggles his data( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) to Xebenkeck, and somehow that is themostplausible element of this story.I am not explaining this well, because there is no explaining this. It's pure crack.





	

Solas dipped his brush in the black pigment. It was early enough in the morning that no one would see, surely. He could afford to be thorough. Methodically, he laid down broad, dark strokes, tilting his head to check that nothing showed through. He'd had such plans for this panel. Purple was a difficult color to cover.

He had, of course, told her to wait for the paint to dry. For a woman who took such delight in being "older than the first dragon's fart," the Inquisitor was unbelievably impatient.

Solas flinched at the sound of a door behind him, willing himself not to make any sudden moves. His next few brush strokes went a bit faster. The steps came closer and closer and, yes, banged open the door to the tower. Just his luck.

"Oy! Comin' through!" Sera yelled. She and Dalish were hauling Blackwall between them. He was not really that drunk, but he was enjoying the theater of the whole affair. Unfortunately, their setup made stairs particularly challenging, with Sera and Dalish hitting the walls on either side.

"Why don't I stand guard down here?" Dalish said. "So you'll fit," she added, when the other two looked confused.

"Good idea!" Blackwall rumbled, and they started crashing their way up.

Dalish flopped into the chair opposite Solas, narrowly avoiding some patches of wet paint. "How long have you been awake?"

The next part came through the Fade, in perfectly unaccented Elven.

"Since being unfrozen, I mean."

\---

In a way, it was like sleeping, only more unconscious. Like a bug or lizard, "aware" only on the level of instinct.

His muscles came back to reality first, loose and warm. Followed by the damp of sweat against skin. He sniffed in, feeling the air catch in his nose. Nothing was processing just yet, there was only sensation. 

"Towel."

Xebenkeck shifted, straining her arm off the side of the couch. Said towel was bunched up on the floor, almost underneath the couch. Too close to reach, unless she could bend her elbow backward, or lift a couple hundred pounds of elf off her chest. She patted his back urgently. 

"Towel?"

Solas grunted.

"Your couch." Giving up, she bear-hugged him and let herself sink into the cushions. 

Pieces of his brain were still connecting to each other. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair at all. There was a couch, and he'd paid far too much for it, and it had furry armrests, and everyone thought it looked dumb, but the fur was soft. The fur was very soft and very dark. Very dark. 

He whipped his hand out, falling halfway onto the floor. As his hip hit the ground, Xebenkeck kicked up in the air, for who knows what reason. If it was a misguided attempt to counterbalance herself, she succeeded. But in winning the battle, as they say, we sometimes lose the war.

As Solas scrambled back with the towel, she'd clapped her legs back together, and was wearing the guiltiest grin in all of Arlathan. 

Solas huffed. Nevertheless, they both pretended there was still hope. They blotted the suspect area with the towel, and Xebenkeck rocked up to sit on top of it. Solas grabbed his leggings and slid into them, settling in behind her. 

Suddenly, she laughed. "Really? On a _towel_?" She'd been smoothing out the corner when she saw the logo. 

"Why not?" He wormed one leg in the space between her bottom and the cushion. His other leg dangled off the edge, toes curled under. He pulled Xebenkeck back to sit in the vee between them. She scooted the towel along underneath her. 

"What was the occasion? Some kind of sweat breakthrough? Self-bathing skin?"

"Nothing. They sent out a message saying 'free swag', so I got one."

"For someone in open breach of his NDA, you have a surprising amount of company loyalty."

Solas sighed. "The terms of the agreement are not so-"

"-clear on that point." Xebenkeck cackled in laughter. "Which point was that, again? The 'don't steal data for our competitor' point, or the 'try not to literally sleep with the enemy' point? What a shame, they always forget to add that to the handbook."

"I do still work for them," Solas said, a little indignantly. "I believe in what they're doing." The last part sounded pat, like he'd read it off a recruiting brochure. 

"Right, you just need us for the money." She leaned back to give him a peck on the lips. "Otherwise, you'd be a poor impoverished programmer, languishing on one catered meal a day. Maybe you'd have to move out of the city!" She turned all the way around, circling his temples with her fingers. Cooing and clucking, as if soothing a spoiled little boy. 

In spite of himself, he leaned back into the pillows and closed his eyes. "That was the point, yes," he murmured, "to live in the city." Perhaps a younger, more impulsive version of himself would have described what it was like. To beg and plead for a connection to the Fade, to see a glimpse of the world. Only to find it made your longing worse, all-consuming. To need to leave, leave, leave before your tiny town turned you rigid.

The younger, more impulsive version of himself _had_ said as much. Oversharing, perhaps. More charitably: honesty. Open communication. None of them had taken it badly. It had not ended any relationships. They had not thought him petty or desperate. 

But every time he'd done it, a strange tension had risen in him before he spoke. Before, and not after.

 _This generation will be the first._ Falon'Din had said, when the reporters mined for quotes. _The first to outrun death._ He was an arrogant ass, but on this Solas believed him. He'd seen the breakthroughs himself. Even wrote the search code for some of them. Wrote it twice, in fact. Though Xebenkeck seemed less interested in applying it to medicine.

She scratched the back of his neck. Strummed her fingers up and down his spine, tangled them through his hair. Every motion slow and mindless. Pulling him deeper and deeper around his own thoughts. He nuzzled closer, settling into the crook between her shoulder and throat. Millennia later, they would call her a temptress. Would claim she could read minds. Only it wasn't mind-reading, just a mind freed from the performance constraints of flesh and blood.

There on the couch, he told her nothing. _I will live far too long to be honest with every woman._ Wasn't that why he came here, after all? For new experiences?

She was still flesh and blood, that day, and her lips were warm.

\---

Solas thought carefully before responding, still focusing on his painting. "Have we met?"

Even diminished as it was, the Fade transmitted the eyeroll with crystal clarity.

"You tried to sell me your sex couch, asshole."

"I am... not sure I know what you mean." As sometimes happens when we meet people from our distant pasts, Solas had the uncomfortable sensation of regressing to his younger self. His younger self was a terrible liar.

"Early Arlathan. Thrift store. Block from your office." she said. "You _really_ thought I wouldn't know what it was, did you?"

"It was a reasonable explanation. Which is more than I can say of telling a Ben-Hassrath your name is 'Dalish'."

Dalish shrugged. " _He_ ran with it. I was going to give him a name. Once I came up with one that sounded... medieval. I was working on it! Anyway, I have some information for you."

"If you are still interested in the couch, I can arrange to have it delivered."

"Fucking wolf dicks, you're actually serious." She shook her head, laughing. "No, I need protection. Bull's handlers have been getting paranoid. Well, more paranoid. Perhaps because some lunatic is stuffing their ranks with double agents."

"Such as yourself?"

"My keeper thought I should see the world a little."

"Is that a yes?"

"Assuming you keep me alive." she said. "Got word they're planning an operation. A dreadnought run. Lots of fresh faces on this boat, people they can afford to lose."

"I am aware."

"Good. Let's talk after the mission."

Sera and Blackwall's footsteps echoed in the stairwell, coming back from whatever adventure they'd discovered in the rookery. Solas fully expected Dorian or Leliana to wake up to some juvenile trap.

"Hey Baldy!" Sera said, eyes darting from Solas, to the half-covered handprints on the wall, and back. "Your pants is purple, all down the front!"

Abruptly, Dalish stood up off the seat.

**Author's Note:**

> In my ridiculous headcanon where Dalish is an ancient elf, I like to imagine that Dalish's bow is a Tyrdda's Axe-type situation. Where "bow" is the correct name for her weapon, and, lucky for her, everyone assumed it was an apostate joke. I also imagine her initial conversation with Bull going something like
> 
> "Nice work! Name's Bull, by the way. The Iron Bull."
> 
> "Thank you."
> 
> "And you are..?"
> 
> _Shit shit shit what do they call themselves these days oh that's right_
> 
> "Dalish! I'm Dalish."
> 
> And because Bull loves guessing backstories and using nicknames, he helpfully plugs all the gaps in her flimsy cover story.


End file.
